


Milkweed

by dogpoet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Medical Kink, Plants, john is brilliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-13
Updated: 2011-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 01:31:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/277075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogpoet/pseuds/dogpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>John had never expected to enjoy taking someone’s blood pressure, but when it was Sherlock’s arm in the cuff, it felt like the sphygmomanometer was whispering all the secrets of that brilliant blood.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Milkweed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [codswallop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [尖尾凤（Milkweed）](https://archiveofourown.org/works/595480) by [dogpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogpoet/pseuds/dogpoet), [ssshannon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssshannon/pseuds/ssshannon)



> Beta by [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/simoneallen/profile)[**simoneallen**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/simoneallen/)

*

 

“John!” Sherlock shouted from somewhere in the flat.

John set down the glass of water he’d been drinking. “In the kitchen,” he shouted back.

Sherlock appeared, wrapping his scarf around his neck. He already had his coat on. “We have a case. Did you wash that glass before using it?”

John looked at the glass. “Do I want to know what was in it?” Living with Sherlock did have its downsides. Not that John would ever go back to living alone.

“Did you wash it?” Sherlock repeated.

“I wash everything before using it. I know you.”

“Good. Past contents irrelevant, then. Are you coming?”

Sherlock often looked momentarily doubtful when he asked this question. It was endearing.

“Do I ever say no?”

They smiled at one another, and Sherlock held out John’s coat. John took it. They were a well-oiled machine, comfortable and functional in their way. Whenever John considered disrupting the status quo, he refrained. Losing this would be unthinkable. And Sherlock had said he was married to his work. There had been no evidence to the contrary.

In the taxi, Sherlock described what he knew of the case, which involved a historic estate in Devon.

“Do you even believe in curses?” John asked as he followed Sherlock into the coffee shop where they were meeting the client.

“Of course not.” Sherlock paused to scan the room. Unerringly, he made a beeline for a tweedy, middle-aged man sitting alone at a four-person table.

The man spotted them and stood. “Mr Holmes, I take it.”

Sherlock nodded. “And my colleague, John Watson.”

“Dr Mortimer.” Before they could sit, Dr Mortimer went on. “Mr Holmes, I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? Or might I make a cast of your skull? It’s quite…lovely.”

John froze. The statement was shocking in its forwardness, and Sherlock automatically stepped back when Dr Mortimer reached out as if to touch his head. John’s neck prickled. He didn’t like the thought of anyone besides himself pawing Sherlock, not even for scientific reasons. Not for any reason.

It was possible that John made a noise or some sort of threat, though he wasn’t aware of doing so. It was only Mortimer’s reaction and Sherlock’s curious stare that alerted him. Embarrassed, John sat down in his chair.

Sherlock turned his attention back to Mortimer. “The case,” he said icily.

“My apologies. I didn’t mean to offend. It is difficult to leave behind one’s studies.”

Sherlock ignored Mortimer.

Flustered and clumsy, Mortimer retrieved several ancient papers, which were protected in plastic sleeves. He proceeded to tell them every last detail about the curse of the Baskervilles, and Sherlock listened intently. John tried to listen, but all he could think about was returning to the flat, sitting beside Sherlock on the sofa, and carefully, gently, measuring his skull, kissing frontal lobe and parietal bone through layers of flesh.

~*~

John knew that Sherlock pushed himself to his physical limits while working a case, forgoing eating and sleeping and social niceties like bathing. When a case was done, it was Sherlock’s habit to fall into bed and ignore the world for a day or two, then wake, ravenous, demanding tea and biscuits and spag bol and beans on toast. This feast or famine cycle, while not exactly healthy, was sustainable; Sherlock routinely solved cases in a matter of days.

But the Baskerville case had taken more than a few days to solve, and sleeping out on the moors hadn’t exactly been good for Sherlock. John returned from a day of locum work to find Sherlock draped on the sofa, his arm hanging over the side of it, like some sort of dead vine. This in itself wasn’t particularly new, but there was something in his complexion that caused warning lights to go off in the medically trained part of John’s brain. Sherlock looked as if he hadn’t eaten in days, and God only knew when he’d last had fluids.

John sat on the edge of the sofa, nudging Sherlock’s legs out of his way. “Sherlock.”

Sherlock opened his eyes. They were dull and glazed, not their usual clear grey.

“Christ, have you had any water today?”

Sherlock’s head fell to the side. He didn’t answer. John leaned forward and placed a hand on Sherlock’s forehead, feeling a tingle rush through him as he did so. Sherlock was a bit warm. Flushed, too. The tops of his ears were bright pink. Definitely dehydrated. Taking Sherlock’s wrist between his thumb and two fingers, he counted the beats of his heart, checking against the second hand on his watch. The radial artery stood out against Sherlock’s pale skin, and John imagined the blood underneath, keeping him alive, keeping his brain working. He caressed the tender wrist with his fingertips.

“Sluggish. I’m going to bring you some apple juice, and then you’re going to bed.” He gave Sherlock another once-over. He looked positively deflated. Not good. Not good at all. An iron supplement wouldn’t hurt. He should have done that long ago, come to think of it.

When John returned with the juice, Sherlock sat up and accepted the glass. John watched him drink.

“You need rest. Maybe we should go on holiday.”

“I don’t need rest,” Sherlock said, his entire appearance contradicting his statement.

“You need a lot of things you don’t think you need,” John said. “Food. Water. Breathing.”

That got a smile. John felt Sherlock’s forehead again, not because he expected a change in temperature but because Sherlock rarely let people touch him, and he hadn’t pulled away the first time. Sherlock submitted to John’s solicitude. John made a careful mental note of that fact.

~*~

In the following days, thanks to vitamin supplements and plenty of food, Sherlock seemed to recover from his exhaustion, and John left off his peremptory medical exams. He no longer had an excuse for them, and Sherlock didn’t tolerate coddling.

John was surprised, therefore, when he came home from work to find Sherlock limp on the sofa again.

“My throat hurts,” Sherlock moaned.

It was so unlike him that John immediately sat beside him, opening up his medical kit and taking out the otoscope. “Open up.”

Sherlock did.

“Ah,” John demonstrated.

“Aaaaaaah,” Sherlock said.

John peered at his throat with the light. It looked fine. Maybe his glands were swollen. John pocketed the light and pressed his fingertips to Sherlock’s throat, palpating gently. Nothing.

“How does it hurt? Is it hot? Sandpapery? Or more constricted?”

Sherlock thought for a moment. “Constricted.”

John felt his throat again. “I don’t feel anything or see anything. You could have a canker in your throat. That sometimes happens if you’re stressed. You don’t look stressed. Any other symptoms?”

Sherlock shook his head. “Maybe some tea,” he said. “With honey.”

John got up. “All right,” he said indulgently.

“Do you know we need more bees in England? We’re importing 90% of our honey.”

“I didn’t know,” John answered, already in the kitchen.

He brought Sherlock his tea a few minutes later, and promptly forgot all about the sore throat.

But the next day, Sherlock still had it.

“My throat still hurts,” he complained when John got home.

“Is it worse?” John asked as he opened up his kit again.

Sherlock hesitated. “Same.”

“I’ve never known you to be sick. Or at least you don’t seem to notice when you are.” John sat and reached for Sherlock’s throat, brushing his fingers gently along the skin at first, and then pressing harder, feeling for the glands. Just to be certain, he palpated the entire neck area in case there was something else he was missing. “Any tenderness?”

Sherlock shook his head, watching John intently.

“I haven’t got a tongue depressor, but a spoon will do. Hold on.” John got up and fetched a spoon. He again studied Sherlock’s throat, shining the light on his tonsils, even checking under his tongue.

Sherlock’s mouth looked very pink and healthy. John briefly contemplated what it might be like to kiss him. Taste him. Very unprofessional of him, really. He banished the thought from his mind.

“No other symptoms, you’re sure?”

“I would know,” Sherlock said.

“I’m not doubting you. It’s just…odd.” John put his stethoscope on, and listened to Sherlock’s lungs through the fabric of his shirt. He didn’t dare ask Sherlock to take it off. Everything sounded clear. “You haven’t been smoking again, have you?”

Sherlock sighed and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a patch.

“Maybe I should send you to the hospital for some tests.”

“What kind of tests?” Sherlock asked. “I don’t need tests. I have you.”

“Let’s give it a few days. If it still hurts, I’ll call and set you up with a specialist.”

The next day, Sherlock’s throat was better. But other things were not.

“My neck hurts,” Sherlock told John in the evening when they’d returned from a case involving stolen diamonds and a man cheating on his wife with the au pair. A trivial matter, Sherlock had called it, solving it in five minutes flat.

“Your neck now?” John said, setting down his nearly empty container of kung pao chicken.

“It might be a tumour. I can feel it.”

“Don’t be daft.” John climbed up on the sofa behind Sherlock, and bent to examine the area Sherlock was pointing to. In fact, there was a lump there. John palpated it tentatively, aware of how close he was to Sherlock, pressed up against him. “Uh-oh,” John said, leaning close to Sherlock’s ear. “I know what this is.”

“What?” Sherlock asked in alarm.

“It’s how you sit on the bloody sofa!” John returned to the much safer area of the sofa he’d been occupying before. “All scrunched up. It’s no wonder you’ve got a knot.” John picked up his fork. He waited to see if Sherlock would ask him to massage the knot because he had a faint suspicion he knew what these recent health issues were about.

But Sherlock didn’t ask. He huffed and curled up in exactly the position John meant. “If I didn’t have to share the sofa, I could lie down properly.”

“All right, then,” John said, getting up to sit in the armchair.

This only made Sherlock look more incensed, but he didn’t say anything more.

Sherlock wasn’t exactly touchy-feely, was he? He let Mrs Hudson hug him, and he even hugged her back, but Mrs Hudson had licence to do many things no one else did. She moved Sherlock’s papers and his skull. She had hoovered up the soil experiment and been forgiven. Mrs Hudson didn’t count. Handshakes didn’t count. Neither, it seemed, did grabbing John’s shoulders or yanking him by the hand when they were off and running somewhere. These weren’t gestures of affection. Sherlock didn’t do affectionate, not even after Moriarty had nearly killed them at the pool.

“Do you want me to massage it?” John asked, testing his theory.

“I’ve got work to do,” Sherlock said, suddenly, and shot up from the sofa.

So much for theories.

~*~

A chemical burn and a mysterious rash plagued Sherlock during the ensuing days. John tended to both, applying ointment to the inflamed knuckle and antihistamine cream to the irritated forearm.

When John returned from Tesco one afternoon, he heard Sherlock calling to him from the kitchen.

John lugged the carrier bags to the table and set them down. “You never help. Do you realise that?”

“I’ve got a splinter.” Sherlock held his finger out accusingly. Behind him, something acrid was boiling in a flask.

“And I got shot in the shoulder. What do you want me to do about it?” John was more than usually cross because he’d found a mould experiment in the laundry, touching one of his shirts. Washing hadn’t got the cloudy, grey stain out.

“Take it out.”

The thing about Sherlock was that he would wait — just wait — for you to do something. John had tried ignoring him and coming back later, but that only delayed the inevitable.

“Fine. Hold on.”

John fetched the tweezers from the bathroom cabinet, then he sat on one of the kitchen chairs with Sherlock opposite him. He took Sherlock’s hand in his and examined the offending finger. The splinter was enormous, and jammed under several layers of skin.

“What the hell were you doing?”

“Experiment,” Sherlock said evasively.

There was no doubt in John’s mind that Sherlock had put the splinter in his finger on purpose. This little game, whatever it was, was going to have to end soon before Sherlock cut one of his limbs off. John manipulated the tweezers deftly, and extracted the splinter from Sherlock’s finger.

Sherlock drew in a sharp breath.

“Sorry,” John said. He set the tweezers and the splinter on the table, then grasped Sherlock’s finger, rubbing gently. “Better?”

“Fine,” Sherlock said, but John could tell it had hurt.

Giving in to impulse, John decided to test his hypothesis again. He bent to kiss the injured finger, heart thundering in his ears. Sherlock didn’t pull away. John kissed the finger again, the soft pad of fingerprint. God only knew what Sherlock had been touching during the afternoon’s experiments, but John didn’t really care. Sherlock had beautiful fingers.

When John looked up, Sherlock was staring at him uncertainly. John didn’t let go of Sherlock’s hand, but instead folded his fingers with Sherlock’s. “All right?”

Sherlock looked away for a moment, then slid his hand out of John’s. “I have had sex before,” he said abruptly.

John took a deep breath, and thought for a moment before responding. He’d wondered about that. Frequently. And he’d imagined remedying the deficit, if there was one. “Okay. Do you… Is it something you’d like to do again?”

“Not at present,” Sherlock said, but he didn’t offer any explanation. He looked intently at the bunsen burner beside him.

What could you say to that? John had no idea. “Um.” He scratched his head.

“I need some growth medium from the laboratory supply shop. You know where it is.”

“You… You want me to go buy you agar? It’s halfway across London.”

“I need it,” Sherlock said emphatically, as if John were dim.

John sighed and looked heavenward. God help him. This was what it was like to fall for Sherlock Holmes. “How much?”

“One package should be sufficient. Hurry.” Sherlock turned back to his experiment.

John waited for only a moment before heading back out the door. Fine. He’d just been rejected — when he’d been _very nice_ , in fact — and now he was off to pick up bloody growth medium. Was this how other blokes dealt with being turned down? Probably not. They probably went to the pub and had a pint. Or they told the person they wouldn’t take no for an answer, and kissed them anyway. But Sherlock wasn’t ordinary. You couldn’t just kiss him. Not if you wanted to kiss him again.

John decided he’d pick up the agar at the Asian grocery instead because it was nearer. Sherlock made do with food grade agar when he was desperate, and John was in no mood to do him favours. If it was that important, Sherlock could have said, but John had a feeling he was only trying to put off talking about the fact that he’d been feigning illness all week in order to get John to touch him. There was no other explanation for his behaviour. Or, knowing Sherlock, there was, and John just hadn’t thought of it yet.

When he returned with the agar, the kitchen was empty. The bunsen burner was off, and the experiment appeared to have been abandoned. John set the agar on the table, and went to find Sherlock.

Sherlock’s bedroom was a no-man’s land that John usually avoided. You never knew what you might step on in there. You could end up with tetanus. John paused at the door, which was ajar. Inside, he could see Sherlock lying in bed, covered by blankets.

“Sherlock?”

“Why are you back already? Stay out!” Sherlock ordered. He looked dreadful, his face yellowish and more gaunt than usual, damp hair clinging to his skin, dark circles under his eyes. “Don’t come near me.”

“You were fine with having me look you over all week. How is today any different?” John stepped carefully over a hypodermic needle. Jesus Christ. And was that a bird wing? It was in John’s nature to go to people when they were sick, and with Sherlock the instinct was even stronger. He ignored the room’s detritus, continuing his journey towards the bed.

Sherlock sat up suddenly, a terrible expression on his face. “I don’t need an _idiot_. You couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me if your life depended on it.”

John stopped in his tracks. Sherlock was often rude, inconsiderate, and plain oblivious, but he was never deliberately hurtful. This had to have something to do with what had happened between them, but John was buggered if he knew what it was. Either that or Sherlock was in some sort of fevered delirium that was having an effect on his brain.

“Unless you’re having me on, something’s seriously wrong with you, and I need to know what it is.”

“Go. Away,” Sherlock insisted. “I don’t need you.”

John prided himself on being level-headed during utterly mad situations. He didn’t stomp out. He didn’t shout. “If this is just an excuse not to talk to me about this afternoon, then —”

“Are you deaf as well as stupid?”

John gritted his teeth. “I’m _not_ leaving until I’ve had a look at you.”

With a loud and long-suffering sigh, Sherlock collapsed back on the pillows. He thought for a moment. “If you insist on staying, then wait in the living room.”

“But —”

“Wait in the living room. A man will arrive shortly. Bring him in to see me. Tell him I’m not well. Tell him I’ve been sick all week. You know I have been.”

The sore throat. The lump on the neck. Those had been faked, hadn’t they? Or at least self-inflicted. But Sherlock couldn’t be faking this time. He looked and sounded terribly ill.

John considered his options. Sherlock would probably jump out the window or do something else stupid in order to get his way. He was a stubborn git when he had his mind set on something. But John could be just as stubborn.

“Fine. In an hour, you’ll let me look at you?”

“Yes!” Sherlock said.

“All right,” John agreed. “But I’m not leaving.”

“Living room.”

John went. Sherlock often gave incomprehensible instructions, which later turned out to make complete sense, but he wasn’t at all himself. He was almost out of his mind. John half thought he should force Sherlock to go to the hospital, but he didn’t like the idea. He would wait an hour, and then drag Sherlock down the stairs and into a taxi. If Sherlock really was ill, what did he have? Meningitis? But Sherlock had been fine a few hours before. Possibly a reaction to something he’d been using in his experiment?

John examined the clutter on the kitchen table, but everything looked fairly standard. No mysterious fungi or spores or chemicals. No animal excrement or dead animals. No body parts. John had just sterilised the fridge. He opened it to see if anything new had appeared, but there was nothing.

John paced the flat feeling both annoyed with Sherlock and worried about him. What would it take to get Sherlock into a cab? A gun would be useless. Sherlock knew John would never shoot him.

Half an hour later, John heard the bell, and he went downstairs to answer it. The man at the door was not entirely healthy himself. He was stooped and thin despite being not much older than John.

“Culverton Smith to see Mr Holmes.”

“John Watson. Come in.”

Mr Smith followed John up the steps to the flat.

“He’s been ill all week, and he’s taken a turn for the worse today,” John informed Smith dutifully. The sooner he could get rid of Smith, the sooner he’d be able to get Sherlock to the hospital, or at least on medication.

“I’m not surprised,” Smith answered gravely. “He’s been keeping company with the worst sorts. Some kind of avian flu, I reckon.”

John was about to question this diagnosis, but thought better of it. “Are you a specialist?” he asked instead.

“You could say that.”

“He’s in here.” John knocked lightly before opening Sherlock’s bedroom door.

Still in his bed, Sherlock looked, if possible, even worse than before. It tied John’s stomach in knots. Sherlock didn’t really think he was an idiot, did he? He was just sick. Dreadfully sick. With every breath, he made a faint gurgling and wheezing sound. What sort of virus progressed so rapidly? And why hadn’t John caught it?

It suddenly occurred to John that Sherlock might be faking this, too. But why? And how could he manage to be so convincing?

Smith peered at Sherlock, stepping carelessly on the floor litter. “Mr Holmes. You look awful, just awful.”

John thought he heard a trace of glee in the man’s voice.

“Hand me that glass, would you? I’m parched.”

“The fever causes dehydration, yes. To be expected.” Mr Smith picked up the glass and passed it to Sherlock, who was struggling to sit up.

Sherlock held his hand out dramatically.

Mr Smith seemed to give the hand a great deal of his attention. “I see you’ve been pricked by something recently.”

“What?” Sherlock’s eyes widened with realisation. “The box.”

“Indeed. The box. Clever of me.”

Sherlock didn’t take the glass. Instead, he fell back weakly. He brought his phone out from under the blankets. He texted something, then hit send.

Mr Smith looked at Sherlock suspiciously. “What was that?”

“Oh, nothing,” Sherlock said in his normal voice as footsteps sounded on the stairs. “But someone is here for you.”

Lestrade stepped through the open bedroom door, followed closely by Donovan. Lestrade deftly cuffed Mr Smith.

“Fingerprints on the glass. They should match the prints on the poison dart. And you’ll find more of the poison on his person. He likely brought it in order to finish me off in case the first dose didn’t do the trick. If that’s not enough, I do have a recording of him confessing knowledge of the box I received in the post.” Sherlock sprang from the bed, suddenly well, holding out a tiny recorder.

Donovan took it from him with a gloved hand, dropping it into an evidence bag. “Thanks, Freak.” She picked up the glass, too, then followed Lestrade from the room.

John watched them go, stupefied. “Isn’t that entrapment?”

“Hardly.”

“Sherlock,” John said, cautiously nearing him. He took Sherlock’s face in his hands, felt his forehead, looked into his eyes. There was a disgusting crusty substance at the corner of his mouth.

“A few theatre tricks.”

“Were you sick at all this week?”

Sherlock looked away.

“Don’t ever, _ever_ do that to me again.”

“I couldn’t let you examine me before. You would have known I was faking, and you’re a terrible liar. You would have given the game away.”

That was his way of apologising. It was as good as John would get. “You had me worried. I thought you’d lost your mind. I can’t imagine anything worse.” It had been an act, but John didn’t think he’d ever forget how it felt to have Sherlock dismiss him so completely, and with no remorse. The Yard might think Sherlock was a psychopath, but John knew better.

Sherlock slipped out of John’s hands. “I need — there’s flour and maize meal in my mouth.” He sounded contrite.

John watched him go. The flat seemed quiet after the brief excitement of Sherlock’s “illness” and the arrest of Culverton Smith. John picked his way out of the room, marvelling at the collection of junk covering the floor, and then climbed the stairs to his bedroom. It had been a long day of ups and downs. He removed his shoes and lay on the bed. He could hear water in the pipes. Sherlock washing his mouth. And probably his hair, too. God only knew what was in his hair. John had to smile at that.

Well, if it had all been a part of a ruse, it was no wonder Sherlock had behaved strangely when John had kissed his fingers. Things would probably return to the way they’d been, then. Sherlock wasn’t the type to hold it against him. But the brief taste of what it was like to touch Sherlock left an ache in John’s stomach. There was nothing for it.

Ten minutes later, John heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

“Hello,” Sherlock said, peering round the edge of the door.

It was unlike him to say unnecessary things. He was nervous. John sat up and watched Sherlock enter the room. He looked freshly scrubbed. His hair was wet, and he’d put on clean clothes. John could feel his heart thumping in his chest.

“Are you all right?”

“I told you,” Sherlock said with his usual impatience, “there was nothing wrong with me.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Sherlock came to stand beside the bed. “If you’d like to be sure, you can examine me. I did say you could.” He lay on the bed, his bare feet sticking out of his trouser legs like beacons. He looked terrified.

John’s heart sped up. Sherlock was difficult to figure out at the best of times. Now, even more so. “I believe you, that you didn’t really have meningitis or swine flu,” John said, but he got up to get his kit.

Sherlock watched as John laid out the stethoscope, the otoscope, the reflex hammer, the thermometer, the sphygmomanometer. He had latex gloves, too, but he didn’t want them. He preferred to touch Sherlock with nothing between them.

Temperature first. When John held out the thermometer, Sherlock opened his mouth automatically, letting John place the sensor under his tongue. The thermometer beeped slowly. Sherlock watched John, and John watched him back. When the thermometer let out its final beep, John reached for it.

“Thirty-seven. Good.” John peeled off the sleeve and threw it in the bin. “Sit up.”

Sherlock did, folding his legs so that his knees jutted out. John fitted a speculum onto the otoscope. He got up on his knees to peer into Sherlock’s left ear, caressing the lobe with his thumb. It was a surprisingly clean ear. Awkwardly, he walked on his knees to Sherlock’s other side to check the right ear.

“It was at uni,” Sherlock said out of the blue.

“Hm?” John removed the speculum from Sherlock’s ear. “Tilt your head back.” John looked into Sherlock’s nose. Irritated, probably from something he’d done for his evening charade. Nothing to worry about, most likely. “What was at uni?”

“Sebastian. Then Victor. And a girl named Betsy, just to be thorough.”

John straightened up to have a look at Sherlock’s face. Sherlock lowered his chin and wrinkled his nose.

“Ah,” John said. “And after that?” He popped the speculum off the otoscope, binned it, then picked up the ophthalmoscope and shone the light into Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock blinked, then let John look.

“They weren’t experiences I wanted to repeat.”

As gently as he could, John said, “You don’t have to repeat them.”

John tried to imagine this Sherlock, the one he knew, having sex with 20-year-old boys, who probably hadn’t understood him at all, not in the least. That had been fifteen years ago, essentially. Sherlock was brave to try again, and John wanted to hold him like a bit of eggshell. But Sherlock didn’t want that, not exactly. Instead, John picked up the blood pressure cuff. The sound of the velcro coming apart was loud in the quiet room. Sherlock rolled up his sleeve, baring his patch-covered forearm and traces of past patches, adhesive stubbornly resisting removal.

John wrapped Sherlock’s arm in the cuff, taking his time adjusting it. He placed the earpieces of the stethoscope in his ears, then sat back on his heels.

“Hold my hand.” John took Sherlock’s hand, folding the fingers in his. With his other hand, he arranged the diaphragm of the stethoscope on the pale skin of Sherlock’s inner elbow, then squeezed the bulb of the sphygmomanometer.

John had never expected to enjoy taking someone’s blood pressure, but when it was Sherlock’s arm in the cuff, it felt like the sphygmomanometer was whispering all the secrets of that brilliant blood. It made John remember why he’d become a doctor in the first place: because the human body was mysterious and miraculous, and because if you understood it, you could help people. This wasn’t exactly how he’d imagined helping anyone, but Sherlock had different requirements. If he needed to be touched like this, that was how John would touch him. John had no idea if Sherlock was even capable of the usual sexual response, but there was this. He liked it, liked knowing facts about Sherlock, facts like 120/70.

“Normal. Everything is normal. Surprising given the way you run about and never eat.”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirked up.

John let go of Sherlock’s hand and removed the cuff, but he kept the stethoscope on. “You could take off your shirt. It makes it easier to listen to your heart and lungs.”

To John’s surprise, Sherlock clambered off the bed and began to unbutton his shirt. He discarded it without care, then got to work on the button and zip of his trousers. John opened his mouth to protest, but Sherlock had a determined set to his mouth. He dropped the trousers just as peremptorily as he’d done the shirt. His boxers — light blue silk — did little to hide his arousal. He cast those aside, too.

He was beautiful. John had never seen him naked. He’d only imagined. All that leg. The bony shoulders. The knobbly knees. His pink nipples. The curve of his arse. His cock jutted out, not quite fully erect. And John wanted. God, he wanted. He hadn’t been aroused during the exam, not really. Interested, yes. Fascinated, yes. Overcome with a strange tenderness, yes. But it had been different for Sherlock, clearly. Had it been that way before, too, when John had palpated his glands, when he’d dug into Sherlock’s finger with tweezers? Or was it just now?

John realised he’d been holding his breath, staring at Sherlock dumbfounded. “Christ,” he muttered.

“Carry on,” Sherlock said, sitting back down on the bed as he’d been before.

Right. Heart and lungs. John might not have been aroused before, but he was quickly catching up to Sherlock as he listened, bell and diaphragm to Sherlock’s heart, its steady thump. He listened for a long minute, reassuring himself of Sherlock’s continued existence. He listened to lungs damaged by cigarettes. He wondered when Sherlock had begun smoking. Probably when he was a kid, to piss off Mummy. Or Mycroft. He let his fingers brush against the skin of Sherlock’s back. He was afraid to do more, afraid he might cross a line that Sherlock hadn’t told him about.

“You like it when I do this,” John said.

“Obviously.”

“You don’t usually let people touch you.”

“You’re gathering data. Data is different.”

“I see,” John said, but he wasn’t certain. “You don’t want me to do anything besides gather data, then? You don’t want me to kiss you?”

“It would have no purpose.”

John tried to wrap his mind around this. “A different kind of purpose, maybe? Different data set.” He pressed his lips to Sherlock’s shoulder. “How you taste.” John opened his mouth and touched his tongue to Sherlock’s skin.

Sherlock took a shuddering breath, his eyes shut.

“Should I stop?”

Sherlock didn’t answer.

John didn’t want to push his luck. He picked up the reflex hammer, then laid a hand on Sherlock’s chest, guiding him onto his back.

The bed wasn’t high enough to test Sherlock’s knee jerk reflex. John let his fingers trail along Sherlock’s shin before he bent to run the tip of the hammer over the sole of Sherlock’s foot.

Sherlock laughed and pulled his foot away, toes curled.

“Good plantar reflexes,” John said. “Perfectly normal.” He grabbed the escaping foot, and kissed the top of it.

When he looked back, Sherlock was watching him, getting his breath back. One hand tentatively stroked his cock. Good. The other foot, then. John picked up Sherlock’s foot and moved it out of his way. Sherlock’s knee bent, and he spread his legs accommodatingly. John knelt beside the left foot, running the hammer tip along the sole, lightly at first, then more firmly. He could hear Sherlock gasping for breath. He tormented the arch of the foot with his fingers before moving to Sherlock’s shins, which he teased with delicate touches before kissing them.

“You have lovely shins, you know. Prime specimens. I should take pictures of them. X-rays. I could x-ray all of you.”

Sherlock sat up suddenly. “Let’s,” he said. “We could do it at Bart’s. I could have yours, too.”

Taking advantage of Sherlock’s elation, John straightened up and kissed him. There was a moment of hesitation, and then Sherlock returned the kiss. They fell back onto the bed together.

“John,” Sherlock said between kisses, “I want you to have my skull.”

John was distracted by the gratification of months of wishes. He had a hand on Sherlock’s bare arse, for Christ’s sake. “What? I thought Mrs Hudson threw it away.”

Sherlock drew back. “Don’t be an idiot. I mean this one. Mine.” Sherlock pointed to his head. “When I die, it’s yours.”

It was a lucky thing he understood Sherlock most of the time, John thought. Most people would have said _I love you_ or something stupid like that. “I’ll take good care of it,” John said. “I didn’t like the way Mortimer was eyeing you.”

“I noticed.”

“Did you?”

Sherlock gave John a look: _obviously_. “I would never have let him measure my skull.”

John kissed Sherlock again, open-mouthed. Sherlock kissed back inexpertly but enthusiastically. Fifteen years. Christ.

“Is this all right, then?” John asked, letting his hand stray from Sherlock’s arse. He traced the length of Sherlock’s cock. All those years, Sherlock must have thought he didn’t like sex. Early data gathering had led him to that conclusion.

“New data,” Sherlock said. And that was permission.

John was still wearing his clothes. “Hold on,” he said, getting to work on his shirt buttons.

His progress was impeded by the fact that Sherlock had the same idea. Their hands collided, sometimes at cross purposes. John laughed, looking up to find that Sherlock was smiling at him in that way he had, smiling as if to say he knew what John was thinking. John stilled Sherlock’s hand, and brought it to his lips so he could kiss the fingers, kiss the faint burn mark from a few days before. He touched it with his tongue, and Sherlock’s face flooded with longing.

John remembered a time he’d visited his aunt and she’d given him dragon-like seed pods from her garden, their rough skins only just splitting open. They had lain on top of his chest of drawers, dark and closed, until one day he came home to find they’d burst. Bits of fine silk floated around the room, soft and shiny, flecked with tiny seeds. Sherlock was like that: strange at first, later making a mess all over the flat, but in a way that made you think he was mysterious and beautiful.

One more kiss, and John placed Sherlock’s hand on his belt, then lay back to let Sherlock undress him. In less than a minute, they were naked and twined together under the disarrayed covers, under a jumble of medical equipment, lying on their sides, and John could feel his blood racing through his veins, eager and aroused. John reached between them, curled his fingers around Sherlock’s cock, and moved his hand experimentally. “Good?”

Sherlock didn’t answer, but his eyes moved the way they did when he was assessing evidence, trying to come to conclusions.

Maybe it was too soon. “Lie back,” John said, letting go. He adjusted his position so that he was lying on his stomach, face close to Sherlock’s groin. If the medical approach put Sherlock at ease, then John was going to keep going with it, even if he ended up performing a rectal exam with latex gloves on. Seeing Sherlock like this was like seeing inside his mind, only in a different way to seeing him make deductive leaps. He was less certain of himself now.

John touched Sherlock’s cock with methodical fingers, probing as if feeling for abnormalities. “No lesions. Everything looks healthy,” he said.

Sherlock propped himself up on his elbows, and watched with interest. John smiled at him.

The head of Sherlock’s cock was already mostly revealed, but John pulled the foreskin the rest of the way back. “No abnormalities. Average length. Circumference a bit larger than I expected given the rest of you.” He carefully palpated Sherlock’s testicles, and Sherlock’s respiratory rate increased. He liked that, then. Good. “The base of the penis is actually here, did you know?” John asked, reaching behind the testicles to press more firmly.

Sherlock’s elbows gave way, and his head fell back onto the pillow. Definitely good. John had had a couple of girlfriends who’d liked to play doctor, but it was a joke to them. A dirty game. With Sherlock, that wasn’t the case at all. Sherlock wasn’t used to people touching him. He didn’t like to admit any vulnerability or need. And he was fragile in his way, wanting John’s approval even as he pretended to scorn it.

John lightly kissed the tip of Sherlock’s cock before taking it into his mouth. Sherlock’s fingers briefly slid through his hair, then fell away. Best to act quickly at this point. Sherlock was almost there, his hips moving unconsciously, telling John what he wanted. John wrapped his fingers around the shaft while he tongued the frenulum tenderly. Sherlock made a wordless sound. John repeated the action, familiarising himself with every bump and curve of Sherlock’s anatomy.

“John.” There was a hint of something in Sherlock’s voice.

John caught a fleeting expression of something between ecstasy and panic. He clambered up to cup Sherlock’s face in his hands and kiss him. “I’ve got you.” He laid one hand on Sherlock’s chest and felt the hummingbird-fast thundering of his heart.

John rolled both of them onto their sides, and Sherlock buried his face in the crook of John’s neck, his hand clumsily groping. John found Sherlock’s hand with his, guided it, kissing him to distract him. Sometimes Sherlock needed to stop thinking.

Sherlock’s fingers were hesitant and warm on John’s cock, arousing in their tentativeness and newness. When his hand found the beginnings of a rhythm, John felt the slow pull of orgasm deep in his centre, a tightening in his balls and his lungs and his spine. He knew chemicals were rushing through him. Sherlock would love if he could measure them, if he could keep a record of John’s responses. John would have let him do anything at all if it pleased him. He’d closed his eyes, but he opened them briefly, saw the intensity and wonder with which Sherlock was watching him, and he came.

As his body and brain returned to normal, he became aware of Sherlock’s breathing, of his back, slick with sweat, so unlike his everyday self, which was always in control and not prone to human weakness. He wove Sherlock’s fingers with his own. “Now you,” he said.

Sherlock seemed uncertain. It was heartbreakingly uncharacteristic. John had never met anyone who could deny their body’s needs the way Sherlock could. He’d never slept with someone so afraid of their own desires. Sherlock didn’t like his body dictating things to his mind. He perceived it as weakness. Sebastian had probably laughed at him.

“Trust me,” John said, bringing their joined hands to Sherlock’s cock, which must have been aching with want. He positioned Sherlock’s fingers, keeping his own hand wrapped round them. With his thumb, he caressed the leaking tip, then moved Sherlock’s hand until it moved on its own. Their bodies were close and awkward, and there was lots of bumping into each other and adjusting. John let his hand stray to Sherlock’s hip, his thigh. He brought Sherlock’s leg up, and hitched it over his own so that he could reach behind to massage Sherlock’s perineum. His fingers found the puckered bud of Sherlock’s anus, and he teased it with light touches, not even pressing inside. Sherlock closed his eyes, made a quiet sound of surprise as he came — a startled gasp, like when he realised something he’d overlooked.

John held him, steadying, for what felt like a long time. The day had been chaotic and strange, but it was good to have Sherlock lying there with him. “You’re brilliant,” John whispered in his ear. “I hope we can do that again.”

“Experiments should always be repeated to verify the data,” Sherlock agreed after a moment, sounding like his usual self. “I have yet to taste you.”

Coming from Sherlock, that statement was potentially not good. “I hope you mean just the normal parts people taste during sex.”

“Normal is boring.”

“Of course it is.” John bent to kiss Sherlock’s pale neck, the dark mole. He lingered at Sherlock’s carotid, lips to the pulse. “I love your blood,” he said, because Sherlock would know what he meant.

“You can taste it,” Sherlock said with such sincerity and affection that John decided to wait a bit before telling him that was on the very outer edge of acceptable. Or maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all. He didn’t like to change Sherlock, and normal had kind of gone out the window when John had moved in.

“This last week, was that all part of your plan to catch Culverton Smith, then? Or was it an experiment to see if you liked me touching you?”

“Experiment,” Sherlock said, finally sounding sleepy. “I had to be certain.”

John pressed his fingertips to Sherlock’s glands, then his radial artery. “You could have just said.”

Sherlock looked indignant. “I didn’t have to. You understood perfectly.”

 _the end_

**Author's Note:**

> I have taken some story threads from Doyle’s _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ and “The Adventure of the Dying Detective.”
> 
> Milkweed ( _Asclepias_ spp., not to be confused with _Euphorbia peplus_ , a European native whose common name is also ‘milkweed’) is not native to the UK, but it is a reasonably common cultivated species, and it is not implausible that John might have encountered it in the garden of someone who enjoys butterflies or weird plants.


End file.
